Conventionally, inkjet printers, laser printers, and the like have been commercialized as printers for personal computers and the like.
On the other hand, with growth in the networking market, network printers to be installed on a network and shared by a plurality of client machines have been introduced into the market.
Against this backdrop, networks with a large number of client machines and a high utilization rate of network printers encounter problems such as suspended processing of print jobs on printers on the network.
A solution to this problem involves installing a plurality of printers on the network, asking each client machine to use the nearest printer, and thereby avoiding concentration of print jobs on specific printers.
When requesting a network printer to process a print job consisting of large amounts of data, print processing speed of the printer requested to process the print job becomes a problem.
A simple solution will be to install high-speed network printers, which, however, are expensive.
Therefore, an image processing system which comprises image forming device and image processing device has been proposed (Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 61-198958).
The image processing system disclosed in Patent Document 1 divides up and output processes a copy job inputted by one image forming device to other image processing device available for distributed processing (distributed processing). Also, while a print job is being processed by image processing device, if one image processing device runs into trouble (paper jam, paper-out condition, low-toner condition, etc.) and can no longer continue subsequent processing, the system makes another image processing device take over the discontinued printing process to complete an output process (alternate processing).
The distributed processing and alternate processing on the network printers are functions which are effective in increasing efficiency and reliability of print jobs on a network. Amid recent growth of security consciousness at companies and offices in terms of protection against leakage of sensitive information, it is required to meet security criteria (consciousness) of users who request processing of print jobs on a network.
However, a problem with the conventional distributed processing or alternate processing methods is that the security levels of devices are not taken into consideration when selecting the devices for distributed processing or alternate processing.
To solve the problems with the conventional techniques, a first object of the present invention is to provide an image processing device in which, an image data processing requesting means verifies security levels of second image data processing means to which the image data processing is to be requested and then requests the second image data processing means to perform distributed processing of image data when requesting the image data processing to the second image data processing means in addition to an image data processing means first requested to process the image data, thereby avoiding concentration of image data on a specific image data processing means, allowing the selected second image data processing means to perform distributed processing of the entrusted image data in conjunction with the image data processing means first requested to process the image data, and keeping security of the image data in mind until the distributed processing of the image data is completed even when improving processing efficiency by the distribution of the image data processing.
A second object of the present invention is to provide an image processing device in which, an image data processing requesting means verifies a security level of a second image data processing means to which the image data processing is to be requested and then requests the second image data processing means to perform alternate processing of the image data in place of an image data processing means first requested to process the image data if the first image data processing means can no longer continue processing subsequent part of the image data when the image data processing means first requested to process the image data processes the inputted image data, thereby preventing the processing of the image data from being suspended on a specific image data processing means, allowing the selected second image data processing means to perform alternate processing of the subsequent part of the entrusted image data in place of the image data processing means first requested to process the image data, and keeping security of the image data in mind until the alternate processing of the image data is completed even when ensuring reliability of image data processing by the alternate processing of the image data.
A third object of the present invention is to provide an image processing system in which, an image data processing requesting means verifies security levels of second image data processing means to which the image distributed processing is to be requested and then requests the second image data processing means to perform distributed processing of image data in addition to an image data processing means first requested to process the image data, thereby avoiding concentration of image data processing on a specific image data processing means, allowing the second image data processing means to perform distributed processing of the image data in conjunction with the image data processing means first requested to process the image data, and keeping security of the image data in mind until the distributed processing of the image data is completed even when improving processing efficiency by the distribution of the image data processing.
A fourth object of the present invention is to provide an image processing system in which, an image data processing requesting means verifies a security level of a second image data processing means to which the image data alternate processing is to be requested and then requests the second image data processing means to perform alternate processing of image data if the first image data processing means can no longer continue processing subsequent part of the image data when the image data processing means first requested to process the image data processes the inputted image data, thereby preventing the processing of the image data from being suspended on a specific image data processing means, allowing the selected second image data processing means to perform alternate processing of the subsequent part of the entrusted image data in place of the image data processing means first requested to process the image data, and keeping security of the image data in mind until the alternate processing of the image data is completed even when ensuring reliability of image data processing by the alternate processing of the image data.